You can find art all over Hillsdale, if you only look

Home Culture You can find art all over Hillsdale, if you only look

With so much artistic talent within our school, it can be easy to overlook or neglect the artistic life of our local community. But to do so is to miss something valuable. There is something natural and authentic about the culture that has grown with and from the area. It is personal and accessible to Hillsdale’s inhabitants if they seek it out, and belongs to them.

The City of Hillsdale and its neighbors are home to a quiet but growing art scene. Several businesses in town are working to supply and develop the community’s art.

Checker Records stocks a variety of music —CDs and vinyl— and hosts occasional live performances, as well as a popular coffee shop. John Spiteri, the store’s owner, says that their biggest market is in blues, country, and rock music, but they are willing to order whatever people want if they don’t have it in stock, and can usually get it within a couple of days.

Volume 1 Books & Records is Hillsdale’s principal supplier of used books, from paperback westerns to philosophical treatises, but it also has a notable collection of used vinyl upstairs, and paintings from local artists for sale. According to store owner, Richard Wunsch, the store will soon be hosting the studio of local painter Dan Brown.

The Broad Street Downtown Market and Tavern has everything in one place: a small grocery with top quality produce, a little restaurant with a menu of traditional tavern food and various entrées, and the brand new Broad Street Underground, an intimate entertainment venue with full bar which hosts local musicians every Friday night and a variety of other events throughout the week.

But local art is not limited to these businesses. A number of organizations in the surrounding community are dedicated to the arts.

Gallery 49 in downtown Reading is an artist co-op that brings together a community of local artists. It hosts gatherings, classes, and art shows throughout the year. The gallery will have art on display at the Hillsdale County Fair in late September.

The Hillsdale Community Theatre is a volunteer theater group that now performs in the Sauk Theater in Downtown Jonesville, putting on six productions every year. Their next show will be “The War of the Worlds,” opening Thursday, Oct. 16.

The Tibbits Theatre in Coldwater puts on a variety of performances and events throughout the year, most notably their Professional Summer Theater series, which runs from June until August every summer. The theater recently received 11 Wilde Award nominations from Encore Michigan and two honorable mentions for their summer performances in the 2013 and 2014 seasons.

The Dawn Theater, Hillsdale’s historic theater and opera house, hosts live music events on occasion. Information on upcoming events can be found on the theater’s website.

If old-timey gospel music is your thing, The Gospel Barn, located between Hillsdale and Reading, is your place. The barn brings in artists every week or so, with admission $5 at the door.

The Hillsdale Wind Symphony is open to members of the community as well as college students. Junior Grace Hertz has played in the symphony since her freshman year. Her experience with the symphony has highlighted the importance of involvement with the community outside of college.

“It’s really awesome to get to know people that you wouldn’t have had the opportunity to meet otherwise,” Hertz said. “To be at the grocery or at Kroger or whatever and to recognize faces that are not from here. It’s just really great to be able to kind of extend your own personal community in that way. I think it just really makes me aware that my own experience here and my own stresses and my own worries are not the end-all-be-all, you know, it’s really nice to be reminded that there’s a whole community outside of our tiny student community.”